The following Powerpoint presentation by the Office of the Inspector General(OIG) tightly summarizes the results of audits 2008 – 2010 and gives a partial representation of more recent audits. (Please note the link on the OIG home page to the left is where one would file a complaint with IOG about your Job Corps Center.) Also, please be reassured that OIG WILL NOT give out your name or any identifying information. When I filed my complaint with the OIG I was still working at Shriver Job Corps. I filed it approximately 5 weeks before I quit. I wanted the OIG to give Shriver my name as, I wanted to be on site so I could show the investigator where all the documentation in my complaint was located. Unfortunately, that did not happen and I left before the investigation began. OIG’s agents never gave my name to Shriver despite my wanting them to do so. Also, OIG’s staff are busy conducting other audits and they have severe time constraints due to the number of complaints and the number of available staff. It will take awhile before the investigation commences.

At Iroquois Job Corps, management staff were required to give up weekends on a rotating basis to act as “duty officer”. They also had to come in on weekends to oversee the return of students from breaks and participate in searching luggage for various contraband. Because they were salaried employees, there was no OT pay, nor was any comp time granted.

In fact, one could not earn comp time at any time working for ETR. This was not the case yrs ago with other corporations that ran Job Corps centers. There were enough staff on centers to manage the center on week ends and to do searches. Over-working the management staff and denying hourly staff their breaks has developed over the years and is obviously condoned by the government. This is a common finding in OIG reviews but other than paying a fine now and then, nothing is done about it.

As reader’s may remember, Blackwater Worldwide was a private security firm under contract to the US to provide security services in Iraq. This illustrious firm opened fire and killed unarmed non-combatant Iraqi citizens and was subsequently prosecuted by the Justice Department. The case was dismissed due to a technicality.

This terrible blotch on their performance record does not affect their ability to work for the government. Instead, we the taxpayers have hired them again to provide security services in Afghanistan. (And, while Federal prosecutors are engaged in an active appeal against the dismissal of the case.)

“Private security firm U.S. Training Center, a business unit of the Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater, now called Xe Services, was awarded the contract Friday, a State Department spokeswoman said Friday night.” (From CBS News Investigates)

All of us; students and staff from Job Corps centers throughout the US keep wondering why corporations like Education and Training Resources (ETR), Adams and Associates and Management and Training Corporation (MTC) are still awarded contracts even when their past history proves repeated wrongdoing and fraud. Really simple. It boils down to who provides the most services at the cheapest price. Using a numbers based method of performance accounting does not require quality, integrity and fairness. No. These values are not part of a dollar-based equation… it is assumed if you reach the goals, you must have used quality methods to obtain them. But, we all know how numbers are subject to manipulation and the media is open to propoganda.

What next? Will Blackwater start to bid on Job Corps contracts? We already have our own Blackwaters in Job Corps, only the names of the corporations are different.

National Academy of American Scholars?

This sensational articleclaims that certain school departments have been falsely claiming to be NAAS (Northwest Association of Accredited Schools) certified, but the NAAS trademark has already been copyrighted with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as belonging to the National Academy of American Scholars. Thus making the schools’ claims illegal. The release posted May 17, 2010, talks about espionage, fraud, terrorists and more… including Tongue Point Job Corps Center, in Astoria, Oregon.

Some excerpts:

“The education departments from the states of Idaho, Utah, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Nevada are suspected of using scarce tax dollars to promote a private business (Northwest Association of Accredited Schools, Inc.) without having first secured a majority voter referendum, or even a public hearing. Illicit partnerships and bribes typically fuel low accreditation standards, consumer fraud, Diploma Mills, and Accreditation scams.”

“Desperate schools and organizations that falsely and illegally claim to have been ‘NAAS’ accredited were in fact sold a scheme of low, incompetent, and inferior standards that were set and defined by an organization whose own standards, ethics, and integrity are so low that it does not accept basic U.S. federal laws, and neither does their accrediting agency adhere to a basic code of corporate ethics…”

“Federal records suggest that their business model, amongst other things, includes both a private partnership with Communist Russia (thus a satellite base of feeder ‘NAAS’ schools in Russia), and a public partnership with an American-based entity that is suspected of violating federal laws.”

The article certainly has shock value but I question whether the schools involved have terrorist thoughts on their mind, might their motive only be simple deception and the use of poor judgement?

Tongue Point Job Corps Center is operated by Management and Training corporation (MTC).

Recently MTC was honored by the National Job Corps Association for being its Operator of the Year for its excellent participation in the Stars Program. The purpose of the “Stars” program is to ensure that positive press about Job Corps is in the news as much as possible. Under “Stars”, Job Corps centers are also required to regularly provide their legislators with information about all the good things happening at Job Corps centers.

“The NJCA also honored MTC as its Operator of the Year. The organization noted that, in 2009, 21 of the 26 Job Corps centers MTC operates, or partners in operating, earned the maximum 48 stars through their quarterly star public outreach program. A maximum of 12 stars each quarter can be earned by maintaining contact with congressional representatives, generating positive media coverage, completing green initiatives and undertaking other community outreach efforts.”

Such positive press for Job Corps is easily found on the internet because the media is bombarded with Job Corps propaganda and hype on a daily basis. (Remember, the Job Corps operators are competing for recognition in the “Stars” program. )

The problem I have with all the media hoopla is the mundane quality of the constant information that is glitzed into our consciousness about Job Corps. Don’t people wonder why the headlines, “Philadelphia Job Corps Students Attend Job Fair” is such a newsworthy event? What’s so earth shattering about it that it should be published?

On the other hand, important information like MTC’s making the “top 100” list of Contractor’s having to pay the Government fines and refunds in the millions of dollars is information that can only be found through careful digging and researching. It’s amazing what we consider important news.

Please read the information here about MTC corporation and its terrible record of contract fraud and labor violations. (This information doesn’t include the OIG reports of MTC’s manipulation of statistics in order to inflate their performance record.)

Again, which is more important news? The fact that MTC’s centers excel at getting press releases in the news at a higher level of frequency than what “Stars” requires? Or, the fact that their corporation has serious flaws in providing accurate information and is on a “Top 100” list for contractor fraud. You decide.

This excellent post provides suggestions on how to “clean up” the Job Corps program:

Regarding Fraud in DOL funded programs:”While the internet has resulted in more transparency of performance statistics there still exists an appalling lack of accountability upon the part of those entrusted with administrating various programs. Case in point; Job Corps contractors. Please research your own OIG audits and other documentation of financial and performance statistics reporting fraud within Job Corps. At this point, fraudulent contractors are charged “damages” and continue on as usual. There is no real accountability as they are more interested in earning bonus incentives, a practice which did not exist yrs ago. By inflating their statistics, they inflate their bonuses. The performance measurement system is convoluted and obfuscates the real effectiveness of the program. Perhaps the new Job Corps director, who, by the way, has first-hand knowledge of Job Corps performance and planning, will finally report honest statistics and do away with incentives to contractors or fight to get rid of contractors all together.

How can the government increase accountability and transparency in Job Corps?

1) Get rid of contractors. The program doesn’t need contractors to run effectively. They are more interested in making money than educating and training the population they are supposed to serve. Privitizing and incentivizing this program has lead to abuse.

2)Pump the money paid to contractors into the program instead: buy decent computers and learning materials, staff the centers with qualified staff who know how to deliver good education and training programs and pay them a decent wage, treat the population with respect by providing a decent environment with enough activities to keep them out of trouble – get real about what goes on at these centers. Some of the physical facilities are in such deplorable condition, it is shameful.

3) Be honest about the actual overall performance of this program. Any psychometrician who knows how the performance statistics of this program are computed will report that those statistics are invalid and the taxpaying public is being grossly mislead. Work with Battelle and Mathematica consultants to report the whole picture.

4) Publish OIG Audits in a timely manner. Taking over a year to conduct and publish an audit that most people are not even aware of, is an injustice to the citizens who pay for this program.

5) Consider moving this program from DOL to the Department of Education.”

Response to this Important Post:

Thank you for your important comment on such a distateful but utterly critical topic. Corruption wastes resources by distorting government policy against the interests of the majority and away from its proper goals. It turns the energies and efforts of public officials and citizens towards easy money or personal pleasures or vindictiveness instead of productive activities. It hampers the growth of competitiveness, frustrates efforts to solve probblems and generates apathy and cynicism. The harms caused by corruption, which are as numerous as the shapes corruption can take, have destroyed well-intentioned policies.

As President Obama has said, “The struggle against corruption is one of the great struggles of our time.” Corruption is condemned by all religions, all ethical codes, all legal systems. It hinders all development, slows all progress, impedes all advancement — both within our own countries and across our borders. It strikes hardest at the poor and vulnerable, siphoning scarce resources away from those most in need. It advances the selfish interests of a dishonest few over the interests of the great many who work hard and who obey the law and our common traditions. Corruption erodes trust in government and private institutions alike; it undermines confidence in the fairness of free and open societies; and it breeds contempt for the rule of law. Corruption is, simply put, a scourge on civil society. And yet corruption continues to flourish. All nations – all nations — struggle against corruption – the United States no less than every other nation. Despite our important achievements, the cancer of corruption remains.

Indeed, each and every one of us should be alarmed by the sobering results of Transparency International’s 2009 Global Corruption Barometer, a global public opinion survey of more than 73,000 people in 69 countries. Half of the respondents to that survey viewed the private sector as corrupt – an increase of eight percent from five years ago. More than 60 percent of respondents said that political parties, parliaments, and government civil service were corrupt. And the poor continued to pay more, largely as a result of petty bribery demands. Shockingly, in some regions, four-in-ten respondents reported having had to make bribe payments in the past year. And only three-in-ten respondents to the survey said that their government’s efforts to fight corruption were effective. This last statistic should be a clarion call to all of us here today.

So it is with purpose and urgency that your email is read—and maybe someone can chart a way forward that will make our efforts to fight corruption more effective. Let me repeat three critical steps that other agencies have suggested:

First, we must renew our efforts for ratification and full implementation of the UN Convention Against Corruption. Seven years after it opened for signature, several of the world’s largest economies – including several of our close partners in the G-20 – still have not ratified the Convention. Still others that have ratified have not fully implemented the Convention.

Thank you for this stimulating dialogue about critical DOLl issues with a view to enriching public debate and promoting consensus on appropriate responses in the Administration, the Congress, the corporate and nonprofi t sectors, and the media in the United States. Good governance and economic transparency are building blocks for democratic stability. Conversely, democracy is threatened where they don’t exist. Many of us have witnessed the corrosive nature of corruption and we thus consider it one of the top challenges to encourage those who wish to integrate themselves in its structure to above all tackle issues of political and business corruption.

Not even the most developed of Western societies ever rid themselves entirely of corrupting influences. Yet, we all must hold the bar high for clean governance and realize that when corruption settles too deeply in a society it can place the system in danger. Corruption is a phenomenon present in all countries, including today’s most advanced economies and established democracies. Where it differs is in its scale and consequences. Corruption can be corrosive to public support for democratization, doing the process long term harm and trust erodes in our institutions and systems.

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What’s On this Website?

Make sure to click on the individual categories listed on this page...
*Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Audit Reports showing number manipulation, fraudulent statistics and false inflation of numbers of graduated students...
*Legislative and Congressional Reports detailing testimonies from Senators and Congressmen that Job Corps is inneffective...
*Newspaper articles and books about Job Corps